2011: The Year of Generosity

Welcome to 2011!  We are excited about the sparkling opportunities and shining moments that lay ahead.  We believe this year will be remembered in years to come as one in which people in the world of work embraced a sense of gratitude for what they have, generosity for the moments they share with others, and passion for what they can become.

Generosity goes by many names--abundance, giving, bigheartedness, even kindness. Paraphrasing the character Portia’s speech about mercy in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, generosity is twice blessed--it blesses the one who gives; it blesses the one who receives.  ‘Tis the mightiest in the mightiest. 

Generosity turns the taking hand of greed into the charitable hand of bounty.  It causes the “Scrooge’s” in the front office care about the “Tiny Tim’s” in the back office.  And, it serves as the foundation of fair play without needed regulations, community at its best, and partnership at its finest.  It is the basis of peace.

Thank you for following our blog. We hope 2011 is your best year ever! We wanted to share with you our firm’s resolutions for 2011.

 The CHIP BELL Group New Year’s Resolutions

1. Help our customers become the world’s smartest buyer by hardwiring learning into every customer’s encounter and becoming our customers’ key source for valuable market information.
2. Learn as much about our customers’ hopes and aspirations as we do about their needs and expectations by asking questions that help our customers problem solve, not just report or respond.
3. Create access to our organization that says we care about customer communication.  Make it super easy for our customers to reach us anytime and any way.  If the Publisher’s Prize Patrol were calling us about our check, we sure wouldn’t put them into our voice mail!
4. Stay in touch with our customer through follow up by phone, newsletter, fax, and e-mail always with a personal (“Thought you’d enjoy page three”) type note.
5. Let our customers customize our processes by building our systems and procedures around what works for them.
6. Make every part of our customers’ experience totally consistent with how we want our organization to be remembered.   We know DisneyWorld doesn’t do “partial” magic; they try to make magical everything from the parking lot to the attractions.  We want to follow that same example.
7. Never stop learning from our customers about ways we can improve by pleading for face-to-face candor and then thanking our clients for what they teach us.
8. Never, ever break a promise or commitment.  Keep it or renegotiate it early.
9. When we make a mistake, acknowledge it quickly, honestly and with a sincere apology.  Then, make service recovery something our customers tell others about.
10. Remember that great service to our customers starts with great service between our associates.  We want to known for zero silos, awesome handoffs, seamless systems and colleagues who enjoy serving each other as much as serving customers.

Best wishes for a fantastic 2011!

Chip and John

Comments

[Sean Moynihan]

I recently took a 7 day cruise to celebrate a milestone birthday. There was one memeber of the staff who consistently went above and beyond normal customer service. On the final night of the cruise I wrote a note that I turned into the front desk mentioning him by name and how if the ship had more employees like him they would have no competition in their industry. After returning home, I sent an email to customer service restating the importance of this employee. To your point about twice blessed, I received a call from the employee a week later thanking me for my note and telling me that he was promoted to the penthouse suites as a result.

After a year of dealing with poor customer service in many different situations it appears great customer service has become a rarity instead of the norm.

With sincere respect,
Sean Moynihan
former soccer coach of the Patterson girls and now disgruntled customer of corporate America)